By David Field, PA Sport Boxing Correspondent, Sydney

Audley Harrison found the punch fit for a royal audience to dramatically win his opening bout in the Sydney Olympics on Saturday.

Princess Anne witnessed Harrison's revenge stoppage victory of Russia's Alexey Lezin at the Darling Harbour Exhibition Hall which moved him on to a quarter-final pairing with the Ukrainian Oleksii Mazikan on Wednesday. And victory in that bout will guarantee the London super-heavyweight a bronze medal.

Harrison, too, gained big inspiration from the historic gold strike of Steve Redgrave and the British rowers earlier in a day which ended perfectly for the muscle mountain.

The door was starting to close on Harrison when he was 5-8 down with less than 90 seconds remaining, but big Audley conjured a left cross to narrow the gap to 6-8.

Better still, Lezin was given a standing count, after which the Algerian referee then stopped the contest with one minute, 10 seconds left.

Lezin outpointed Harrison in the first Olympic qualifier in Finland a year ago, and since then the sole British boxing medal hope has closely studied his foe in readiness for a major moment like this.

Harrison, 28, admitted: "I thought he should have been allowed to carry on in all honesty. I hit him with one shot, a left cross, he was definitely hurt. He was ready to go, it was a matter of following up.

"Lezin's beaten me before, he's studied that. But he got public warning. He was holding me on the inside, and took away my effectiveness a bit. I had my answer; I said I would catch up with him, I said I wanted four clean shots on him, left crosses, I had three."

British coach Ian Irwin admitted Harrison "needed a kick up the backside" at the start of the fourth. Because in the third, Harrison let slip a lead of 5-2 to trail 5-6 as the Russian increased his tempo markedly.

He simply had to after being penalised two points for holding in the second to give Harrison a major initiative - that after a cagey opening round in which there was one scoring punch, to Lezin.

The clock ticked down, but Harrison refused to panic and found the tool to complete the job. After the elimination of light-heavy Courtney Fry in the first round on Wednesday, it was a relief for all concerned in the British camp.

"I had my foot off in the third round. He changed his tactics, he came at me which he had to do, and made it interesting," added Harrison.

"What we've been working on is not tensing up, not to lose my composure, move my head, trying to look for counter. I knew at some stage he was going to try and open up.

"Revenge is sweet, a lot of people have written me off. This guy was meant to be one of the favourites. I lost to him last year and because of my improvement I've beaten him this year.

"Obviously the Cuban Rubalcaba is there, but I've beaten the Italian (Vidoz) before. It was a tough one, but now I'm on to the next stage, but we've got a long way to go yet.

"The Russian's clever, I had to be cleverer than him, which meant less punches, people were shouting 'work rate' at me, but work rate against somebody moving away is hard to apply.

"I was definitely a matter of landing that left cross which came to my rescue - 8-6 behind was probably about right. It was a matter of keeping my composure and not launching. It came, I've worked at it so I am happy.

"I watched Steve Redgrave winning the gold medal and I saw their interview after. I definitely got a boost off that.

"We can go abroad and win gold medals, we can be great. Let's move on and multiply. I was told that Princess Anne would be here which was a boost; I don't think Princesses come to too many boxing matches."